converting attachments to text

converting attachments to text

[Bart Bunting]

Hi,

Just looking for some pointers.

I have to deal with quite a few emails with attachments in either pdf or
word format.

I'm on a mac so can use applescript or something pdftotext or similar to
convert them to text.

I'm blind so use emacspeak as my primary interface.  Having an easy way
to convert the notmuch attachments to text other than saving to a file
and processing them would greatly speed up my workflow.

Is there something in existance already to do this sort of thing?

I have a little rudimentary lisp skill so can hack something up if
someone can give me some pointers on a direction to head in.

Any advice appreciated.

Kind regards

Bart

Kind regards
Bart
-- 

Bart Bunting - URSYS
PH: 02 87452811
Mbl: 0409560005

Re: converting attachments to text

[Daniel Kahn Gillmor]

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On Tue 2017-01-03 02:27:23 -0500, Bart Bunting wrote:
> I'm blind so use emacspeak as my primary interface.  Having an easy way
> to convert the notmuch attachments to text other than saving to a file
> and processing them would greatly speed up my workflow.

I use notmuch-emacs, and frequently pipe message parts (attachments)
into pipelines with ". |" (that is, the dot key on my keyboard, followed
by the pipe key on my keyboard) while the cursor is over the button
representing the attachment.

If any of your tools can work in a pipeline (e.g. "pdftotext - -"), you
could try that, but i don't know how to feed the output of the pipeline
into emacspeak.

hope this helps,

     --dkg



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Re: converting attachments to text

[Brian Sniffen]

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Sure!  Here's what I use for docx, and I think it could be adapted to
pdf with pdftotext or whatever you're already using there.  You need a
small shell script that reads from STDIN, writes to a file, and calls
pandoc or pdftotext or whatever, like ~/bin/antiwordx:

    #!/bin/sh

    tmpfile=$(mktemp /tmp/antiwordx.XXXXXX.docx)
    trap 'rm -f -- "$tmpfile"' INT TERM HUP EXIT
    cat > "$tmpfile"
    pandoc --normalize -r docx -w markdown "$tmpfile"

You need a small handler function to call it from Elisp---see attached
file `inline-docx.el`, which assumed you have both the old `antiword`
for old-style .doc files and pandoc for new-style `docx`.

I apologize for the roughness of the code; it should probably use
customizable paths for pandoc and such.

-Brian


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Bart Bunting <bart.bunting@ursys.com.au> writes:

> Hi,
>
> Just looking for some pointers.
>
> I have to deal with quite a few emails with attachments in either pdf or
> word format.
>
> I'm on a mac so can use applescript or something pdftotext or similar to
> convert them to text.
>
> I'm blind so use emacspeak as my primary interface.  Having an easy way
> to convert the notmuch attachments to text other than saving to a file
> and processing them would greatly speed up my workflow.
>
> Is there something in existance already to do this sort of thing?
>
> I have a little rudimentary lisp skill so can hack something up if
> someone can give me some pointers on a direction to head in.
>
> Any advice appreciated.
>
> Kind regards
>
> Bart
>
> Kind regards
> Bart
> -- 
>
> Bart Bunting - URSYS
> PH: 02 87452811
> Mbl: 0409560005
> _______________________________________________
> notmuch mailing list
> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
> https://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch

Re: converting attachments to text

[Bart Bunting]

Hi Brian,
Thanks so much for this, it has done exactly what I was after!


Kind regards

Bart

Brian Sniffen <bts@evenmere.org> writes:

> Sure!  Here's what I use for docx, and I think it could be adapted to
> pdf with pdftotext or whatever you're already using there.  You need a
> small shell script that reads from STDIN, writes to a file, and calls
> pandoc or pdftotext or whatever, like ~/bin/antiwordx:
>
>     #!/bin/sh
>
>     tmpfile=$(mktemp /tmp/antiwordx.XXXXXX.docx)
>     trap 'rm -f -- "$tmpfile"' INT TERM HUP EXIT
>     cat > "$tmpfile"
>     pandoc --normalize -r docx -w markdown "$tmpfile"
>
> You need a small handler function to call it from Elisp---see attached
> file `inline-docx.el`, which assumed you have both the old `antiword`
> for old-style .doc files and pandoc for new-style `docx`.
>
> I apologize for the roughness of the code; it should probably use
> customizable paths for pandoc and such.
>
> -Brian
>
>
> (defun mm-inline-msword (handle)                                                  
>   (let (text)                                                                     
>     (with-temp-buffer                                                             
>       (mm-insert-part handle)                                                     
>       (call-process-region (point-min) (point-max) "antiword" t t nil "-")        
>       (setq text (buffer-string)))                                                
>     (mm-insert-inline handle text)))                                              
>                                                                                   
> (defun mm-inline-docx (handle)
>   "pandoc --normalize -r docx -w markdown %s"
>   (let (text)                                                                     
>     (with-temp-buffer                                                             
>       (mm-insert-part handle)                                                     
>       (let ((coding-system-for-read 'utf-8))
> 	(call-process-region (point-min) (point-max) "/Users/bts/bin/antiwordx" t t nil))
>       (setq text (buffer-string)))                                                
>     (mm-insert-inline handle text)))                                              
>
> (setq my-inline-mime-tests
>      '(("text/rtf" mm-inline-rtf
>         (lambda
>           (handle)
>           (let
>               ((name
>                 (mail-content-type-get
>                  (mm-handle-disposition handle)
>                  'filename)))
>             (and name
>                  (equal ".rtf"
>                         (substring name -4 nil))))))
>        ("application/x-msword" mm-inline-docx
>         (lambda
>           (handle)
>           (let
>               ((name
>                 (mail-content-type-get
>                  (mm-handle-disposition handle)
>                  'filename)))
>             (and name
>                  (equal ".docx"
>                         (substring name -5 nil))))))
>        ("application/x-msword" mm-inline-msword
>         (lambda
>           (handle)
>           (let
>               ((name
>                 (mail-content-type-get
>                  (mm-handle-disposition handle)
>                  'filename)))
>             (and name
>                  (equal ".doc"
>                         (substring name -4 nil))))))
>        ("application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" mm-inline-docx identity)
>        ("application/octet-stream" mm-inline-docx
>         (lambda
>           (handle)
>           (let
>               ((name
>                 (mail-content-type-get
>                  (mm-handle-disposition handle)
>                  'filename)))
>             (and name
>                  (equal ".docx"
>                         (substring name -5 nil))))))
>        ("application/octet-stream" mm-inline-msword
>         (lambda
>           (handle)
>           (let
>               ((name
>                 (mail-content-type-get
>                  (mm-handle-disposition handle)
>                  'filename)))
>             (and name
>                  (equal ".doc"
>                         (substring name -4 nil))))))
>        ("application/msword" mm-inline-msword identity)))
>
> (mapcar (lambda (x) (add-to-list 'mm-inlined-types (car x)))
>         my-inline-mime-tests)
>
> (mapcar (lambda (x) (add-to-list 'mm-inline-media-tests x))
>         my-inline-mime-tests)
>
>
> Bart Bunting <bart.bunting@ursys.com.au> writes:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> Just looking for some pointers.
>>
>> I have to deal with quite a few emails with attachments in either pdf or
>> word format.
>>
>> I'm on a mac so can use applescript or something pdftotext or similar to
>> convert them to text.
>>
>> I'm blind so use emacspeak as my primary interface.  Having an easy way
>> to convert the notmuch attachments to text other than saving to a file
>> and processing them would greatly speed up my workflow.
>>
>> Is there something in existance already to do this sort of thing?
>>
>> I have a little rudimentary lisp skill so can hack something up if
>> someone can give me some pointers on a direction to head in.
>>
>> Any advice appreciated.
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Bart
>>
>> Kind regards
>> Bart
>> -- 
>>
>> Bart Bunting - URSYS
>> PH: 02 87452811
>> Mbl: 0409560005
>> _______________________________________________
>> notmuch mailing list
>> notmuch@notmuchmail.org
>> https://notmuchmail.org/mailman/listinfo/notmuch
Bart
-- 

Bart Bunting - URSYS
PH: 02 87452811
Mbl: 0409560005